Earlier this month, Mano a Mano’s Navajo airplane participated in an Ebola response practice session, transporting eight simulated Ebola patients from Brazil to Bolivia as part of an emergency response drill.
Ebola Emergency Response Drill
Mano a Mano co-founder Segundo Velasquez is currently in Bolivia and sent the following note about the drill:
It was pretty interesting. The eight ‘patients’ were having the time of their lives….taking pictures in front, inside, outside of the each of the airplanes…..feeling priviledged to be around airplanes.
‘Patients’ loading on the plane to arrive on a scheduled flight to a selected part of the airport. Once our airplane arrived, soldiers taped off the area and fully masked and suited personnel approached the airplane. All suspected travelers were taken to the hospital.
Once the airplane (landed) taxied to a designated spot of the old airport terminal, military soldiers encircled and cordoned off the airplane……soon after our captain gave an OK, and the tower allowed four very protected doctors to approach the airplane….four ambulances and more people assisted the patients who reported fever and head aches to be transported by ambulance to the hospital for treatment or to be monitored. The scenario was that the patients had arrived from Brazil and had recently been in Africa.
After the event Mano a Mano was thanked and informed that nobody else could have done this, especially on such a short notice. We were invited to go to the terminal to participate in the recognition event after putting away the airplanes. But, I think, we were too late. We think they left before we got there.